Current Problem

I see two main problems:1. Our global mindset seems to be that there is not enough to go around (i.e. not enough for everyone to live well), so you have to aggressively take what you can get and hoard it for those close to you (family, friends, community, country). This may have been true in the past, but studies have shown we have the technology to provide everyone a very high standard of living.

Buckminster Fuller (Bucky), committed his life to figuring out how to do more with less, and back in the 1980's he concluded that the current technology available could use the world's resources so sparingly that we could give everyone a standard of living on par with North America (or better). All we would need to do is conjure up some Spontaneous Cooperation, and work really hard for 10 years to make it happen. Unfortunately rather than focusing our efforts on making Spontaneous Cooperation happen, we seem to focus on better solutions that we don't implement.

Check out this Article on moving from Weaponry to Livingry.It seems like a daunting task to try to change the world wide belief that there is not enough for everyone, and it seems to be continually backed up by our wasteful actions and warnings from people concerned about the environment. There is no shortage of people saying we are running out of resources, saying we must be more efficient, but none of them seem to promote the notion of more with less, they are always promoting less with less. The idea they seem to be selling is one of sacrifice, where we must all make sacrifices to conserve. I think the only way to get people on board with this new paradigm is show them how you can get more with less. And by show them, I don't mean in theory, I mean in practice. People need to be using these new efficient solutions and they need to be envied. They need to be the equivalent of people walking around with iPads.

That is how you are going to get spontaneous cooperation without a preceding disaster, you are going to get it when people are acting out of self interest. When they see the act of collaborating and sharing as a way to get more for themselves. More what I will get too a bit later, but it certainly won't be money. Money is a useful tool, but studies have shown that when people associate success with dollars their desire is never satisfied, so it's really not a good one to base success or happiness on.

I'm not the only one with this sharing or collaborating idea, there are many people much more involved in it than I am, but I don't think anyone has proposed as big of a system as I am proposing in my solution.

Two books I know of related to this are "The Mesh" and "We First", both promoting the benefits of collaboration, and how it is the future.These authors have also have videos online where they sum up there ideas if you want a synopsis, The Mesh on TED, We First RSA Talk.

I really love Simon Mainwaring's message in We First, I see it as Bucky's message in language that business and consumers can understand. When people hear 'spontaneous cooperation' or 'collaboration', they probably think they are giving up their self interest. They probably think they are going down the path of socialism or communism, and they don't want to go there.. But as Simon Mainwaring points out, you don't put your self interest aside, we just have to shift to a mutual self interest point of view, and a longer term view of our self interest. He says the best way to get what we want is usually to help others achieve what they want.". This is not something new or different, typically the businesses that succeed are the ones that provide services which allow their clients to operate most efficiently. Look at the computer industry, it is booming because the companies using their products are now able to do 10x the work.

In conclusion, we have the tech to make the world work for 100% of humanity, to do this we need to adopt a "We First" mentality rather than a "Me First" mentality, meaning we can't just look out for ourselves as we have been doing. And if we don't adopt a "We First" mentality, we will not only not have the world working for 100% of humanity, it will be working for a smaller and smaller percentage of humanity, and the big potion it's not working for might get unruly, and we may get see a lot of strife.2. Large corporations are arguably the most powerful organizations on the planet, and we have legally bound them to operate in such a way that they must maximize profit above all else. That means they must exploit everything they can, break or bend every rule in the book to maximize profit, with no regard for the well being of the planet (humans included).

This may sound a bit far fetched, but I am not making this up, this is what the law says. It was first drawn to my attention in the documentary "The Corporation", and more recently I heard it mentioned in a talk by Polly Higgins, a lawyer who has identified this flaw in our system, and has committed her life to fighting laws like this.I think the work she is doing is some of the most important work that could possibly be done, I think she is on the path to averting massive crisis, my only criticism is that she needs to market it better. She talks about the earth being a slave, and that she is the earth's lawyer, and I think some people may discount her as a 'hippie idealist' and not listen to her or read her book. Luckily many governments are listening to her and she is gaining traction because she is by no means someone that should not be listened to. If we don't take her advice and pass her laws we are going to see corporations destroy this planet because they are legally bound to.With our current laws in place it is no wonder we are not using our technological advances to work together to make the world work for 100% of humanity. Typically helping the world would mean building products that cost less and don't need to be replaced, neither of which seem good for a financial bottom line. Corporations need customers to keep coming back again and again, they need cash flow, they need to sell the cheapest thing they can for the most money they can. And even if a high ranking individual at a corporation wanted to do something good for the world they would be risking prosecution (jail time maybe), or getting fired at the very least.

Let me give you some examples:- Oil companies buying up mass transit companies (trolly cars), and shutting them down in order to promote reliance on cars (mentioned in 'Who Killed the Electric Car').- Fox news altering/hiding facts in order to protect advertisers interests and then winning the case against the whistle blowers who brought this to light. FOX news won the case on the basis that they have no obligation to tell the truth, news programs have no more of an obligation to tell the truth than any TV drama (mentioned in 'The Corporation').- The story FOX news covered up was that drug companies were pushing growth hormones on dairy farmers so the cow produce more milk, when there is a surplus of mild in the country, and the hormones are getting into the milk, not to mention other disgusting things due to sores on the utters (mentioned in 'The Corporation')

- In 'RiP: A Remix Manifesto', the narrator not only talks about the problems with copyright laws related to media, he also mentions that medical research is held back by patents, because the funding will limit what patents they can do research with. Company A will not want any good press which could increase sales of a drug owned by Company B, so even if there are promising treatments or combinations of treatments they won't always be researched.- Study after study shows that plant based diets (reduction in animal protein intake) reduces many health risks, cancer being a major one, and the production of animal protein has a significantly higher toll on the environment than plant based proteins, but there is less money in it. But what do we see promoted, and what are most of us still eating, meat, and the more the better, the bigger the steak the better, the larger the portions the happier we are. But this is only good for businesses, it's bad for our health and bad for the planet ('Food Inc.' and 'In Defense of Food' cover this topic)

- On the topic of the meat industry 'Fast Food Nation' does a good job outlining how corporations like McDonald's have reshaped our society for the worse all in the name of profit, providing lower than minimum wage jobs, decimating our environment for food production, contributing to the unhealthy western diet, and taking people to court if they say anything negative about them (see McLibel)Those are just some examples, I'm sure you can think of many more. But the bottom line is we cannot keep the system the way it is. We cannot afford to have corporations legally bound to maximize profits with no regard for collateral damage. If we continue to do this, corporations will continue to use up the resources, destroy the environment, exploit workers around the world and trick us into parting with our money to buy things we do not really need, and may actually be bad for or health.

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